Setting a greeting based on user's time (Good morning, good afternoon…)

Question

Can anyone extrapolate on how to implement a basic \"good evening\" or \"good morning\" based on the user\'s time setting?

Perhaps PHP will fetch the server time, but I

Answer 1

Base it on .getHours() of the date object. Using javascript's Date object will automatically use the user's local time, rather than the server-time:

var now = new Date();
alert( now.getHours() );

A couple conditional checks, and you're in business. For instance, the following is a very simple and easy-to-understand example:

var now = new Date();
var hrs = now.getHours();
var msg = "";

if (hrs >  0) msg = "Mornin' Sunshine!"; // REALLY early
if (hrs >  6) msg = "Good morning";      // After 6am
if (hrs > 12) msg = "Good afternoon";    // After 12pm
if (hrs > 17) msg = "Good evening";      // After 5pm
if (hrs > 22) msg = "Go to bed!";        // After 10pm

alert(msg);

It's currently 2:56am here, so I see "Mornin' Sunshine!" when I run this. You can test your own local time with this online demo: http://jsbin.com/aguyo3/edit